Rated: Not Rated | Running Time: 90 Minutes
From: Dark Sky Films
In Theaters and on Digital Platforms: March 4, 2021
Jane (Emma Fitzpatrick) is kind of messed up. She does drugs, drinks, is kind of mental, and got attacked by a monster.
The underlying problem?
When you do drugs, drink a lot, and are kind of mental, most no one believes you if you are attacked by a monster.
What do you do if you are Jane?
Well, as Jane is also a social media influencer type, she takes her story to the little screen.
That’s great and all, but the problem is there is still this monster, the adults in the room don’t seem to want to do anything about it, and said monster keeps attacking Jane.
So, Jane decides she must kill it.
Such is the basic premise of “Take Back the Night,”
Let’s dive in a little more.
Jane is fresh from an art showing and is now in a dark alley. When she finds herself locked in the alley she gets attacked by some creature and then ends up in an emergency room.
The detective, Jennifer Lafleur, questions her, the rape kit is brought out, Jane’s sister, Angela Gulner, isn’t sure of the attack, and I question the care of the hospital as Jane is sent home with this giant gash in her belly that doesn’t look like it received any stitches.
Since no one seems to really want to help, and all her sister wants to do is send her to therapy, Jane posts on social media to get her fans involved. Low and behold the post goes viral. Really, who doesn’t want to see a person with a giant gash in their belly claiming to be attacked by a monster?
If that isn’t bad enough for Jane, here comes the local news reporter who interviews Jane but has ulterior motives to discredit Jane, the detective that did the original questioning now questions Jane’s timeline of events, and Jane takes a drive down a weird alley, where, of course, we get another monster attack. We also learn she is the worst videographer, ever, as she doesn’t any good video of the monster. But hey, some of her followers caught a “glimpse,” though, and they have the same scars, and they let Jane know how to kill it.
Yes, now Jane is a metalsmith, and eventually it is time for the climactic scene between good and evil. Sadly, Jane is kind of wasted. The ending doesn’t finish the way I wanted, nor probably how Jane wanted, and I was bummed.
Here’s the thing, I get the underlying tone of the movie – a woman is attacked and people don’t believe her. Her story gets picked apart, she is subjected to ridicule, and she really doesn’t know what to do. At that core the movie is great. The difficulty comes with the strange plot twists, like the TV reporter being romantically linked with the detective, Jane having to forge a specific knife to kill the monster, and the ending, because, and I’m just guessing, but there would be a lot more difficulties for Jane following the climactic fight on the roof.
The movie looked good, the acting was good enough, but I guess I just wanted some kind of closure for this movie, some kind of success for Jane, rather than an ending that sets up “Take Back the Night 2.”
It’s 2 1/2 stars out of 5 for “Take Back the Night.” I wanted Jane to win, I mean really win, and not end up wearing a wig.
That’s it for this one! L8R!!!